Preuksa Real Estate's president Thongma Vijitpongpun, 49, started his business 13 years ago by using his personal savings of Bt50 million. His assets are now valued at Bt9.9 billion and will reach Bt10 billion next year.

He graduated from Chulalongkorn University in 1981 with a bachelor's degree in engineering and his first job was as an engineer for PCM (Thailand).

Not much later, he worked for a leading construction firm, Vijitphan Construction Partnership. It was to be his last job as an employee.

"My job at Vijitphan was to appraise buildings for joint bidding against other competitors," he recalls. "But my boss usually disagreed with the appraisal. He usually added to the bidding price until the company lost the job. As a result, I thought that if I had joined that bidding on my own account, I would have had more success than my boss."

Thongma started his first business as a construction sub-contractor in 1985 with less than Bt100,000. His first job was helping to build a small bridge in Chachoengsao province.

He spent eight years in the construction business, seemingly caught in a cycle of two years of good business and two years of bad. It left both him and his business insecure.

"I thought: 'I have to change my job'. But the question was: 'What will I do?'" he says.

Then, one day in 1993, Thongma found himself in a seminar being addressed by then prime minister Chuan Leekpai.

Chuan said there was strong growth in demand for housing priced lower than Bt600,000 per unit, and this offered an opportunity for new business entrepreneurs.

"I believed the prime minister and started to spend my savings, amounting to Bt50 million from the construction business, on my first property project on Ratchadaphisek Road," he said.

Thereafter, the past 13 years have been a road to the top. Preuksa Real Estate is now ranked as Thailand's number one property developer in terms of volume by constructing up to 10,000 houses per year. In terms of value, Preuksa is among the top five in the property market, enjoying total sales of Bt8 billion a year.

When the economic crisis struck in 1997, most of the country's property firms went to the wall. Some found foreign partners in order to survive, but Preuksa survived on its own.

Thongma says the key to success is management. "I manage both the business costs and human resources," he says.

Preuksa began by importing a construction process from France called "tunnel form" building. It reduced construction costs by about 20 per cent over traditional construction methods.

Then Thongma adopted a new German system of "pre-cast technology" that further reduced construction costs as well as speeding up the construction process to save management costs

With the company's costs thus lowered, Thongma turned to human resources and business management. He hired IBM to set up an internal management system.

"I never hesitate when it comes to human resources and technology for developing the business in the long term," he says, explaining for example that Preuksa spends between Bt40 million and Bt50 million per year on research and development with the aim of setting up information technology to help the company reduce management costs.

Recent difficult economic and political conditions have made 2006 a testing time for Thailand's property developers.

Many reported only slight growth in sales in the first nine months, with others admitting to falling sales. But Preuksa Real Estate recorded a net profit of Bt974.3 million from total sales of Bt5.9 billion in the first nine months, up by 6.1 per cent and 8.8 per cent respectively year on year.

The company expects its sales to reach Bt8 billion by the end of this year and it has a target of Bt10 billion in sales next year.

Thongma says the keys to successful project sales are location, quality and price.

"We offer reasonable prices by targeting our margins between 15 per cent and 20 per cent. That is lower than our competitors, who expect margins up to 28 per cent and 35 per cent," he said.

Thongma says his goal now is to maintain his business growth as a measure to drive growth in the national economy.

"Money is not our goal, but we want to be one of the measures to drive the economy. We create up to 1,100 jobs. We also create work for our suppliers. These things will help strong economic growth in Thailand. That is our goal now and in the future," he says.

Somluck Srimalee

The Nation